Mouth

A man dressed as a woman was shot and robbed of his purse Tuesday night as he walked through a Brooklyn Park alley.Angel Lopez, 42, of the 800 block of Edmondson Avenue in Baltimore, was in fair and stable condition yesterday at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center at University Hospital in Baltimore.When police arrived at the 5100 block of Wasena Avenue, Lopez told police he was a woman and his name was "Angie," said police spokesman V. Richard Molloy.He told investigators he was walking in the alley, when one or more assailants hit him in the mouth.

Q: What is the best way to take a child's temperature? There are so many new kinds of thermometers and some are expensive.A: First, let us say that most parents are more worried about temperature than they need to be. Fever can be an important sign of illness, but the exact degree of fever may not be important and fever is rarely, if ever, the only sign of serious illness requiring treatment. Since there is variation in normal body temperature throughout the day and between individuals, taking the temperature when the child otherwise appears well can make parents feel a child is ill when he or she is not.When you need to look for fever, there is nothing wrong with using the standard glass thermometer.

I WAS FEELING PRETTY good when I went to see Stanley. Stanley is my dentist. I chose him because he meets the American Dental Association's single most important criterion for selecting a dental-care professional: He looks exactly like Willie Nelson. If Stanley put on a headband and got on stage at a country-music concert, the audience members would absolutely believe that he was Willie Nelson, except that instead of telling them not to let their babies grow up to be cowboys, he would tell them to floss.

Q. I am desperate for a remedy for canker sores. My mouth is just full of them and they are so painful I am having trouble eating. My doctor prescribed Aphthasol, but it didn't help. My dentist has offered antibiotics and strong steroids, but nothing has worked.A. Physicians don't know what causes canker sores (aphthous ulcers), but a deficiency of folic acid, vitamin B-12 and iron may contribute. Prescription treatments are not always effective.We recently heard from D.W. in Garland, Texas, whose mother was a dental assistant in the 1930s.

**** EXCELLENT*** GOOD** FAIR* POORSalt waterOCEANInshore *** 1/2 Large flounder have been taken on minnow and squid combinations in the inlet at Ocean City, at the Route 50 bridge and near Buoy 13. Blues from 1 to 6 pounds are hitting finger mullet in the surf at Assateague and North Ocean City. Some sea trout are in the surf, too, but a better bet is to fish the south side of the inlet with bucktails and grubs on the rising tide.Offshore *** Tuna fishing has been slow at the canyons, but several white marlin were caught and released last week.

Severance: Stories Robert Olen Butler Chronicle Books / 264 pages / $22.95 In Severance, we are privy to the streams of consciousness that 62 heads experience upon being cut from their bodies. It is believed that after decapitation the head remains conscious for 90 seconds; at a heightened state of emotion, humans speak at a rate of 160 words per minute. Thus, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler gives us exactly 240 words for each of his heads. They are as varied as Medusa, Anne Boleyn, John the Baptist, the dragon slain by St. George, a chicken on its way to a Sunday dinner in 1958 Alabama and even Butler himself ("writer, decapitated on the job, 2008")

Editor's note: In this excerpt from the Caldecott Medal-winning book written by Jane Yolen and illustrated by John Schoenherr, a father and daughter trek into the woods on a winter's night to see the Great Horned Owl. We went into the woods. The shadows were the blackest things I had ever seen. They stained the white snow. My mouth felt furry, for the scarf over it was wet and warm. I didn't ask what kinds of things hide behind black trees in the middle of the night.

Looking and acting something like an underwater canister vacuum cleaner, a prehistoric marine reptile apparently used its extremely long neck to sneak up on and suck in unwary fish swimming in murky shoreline waters 230 million years ago. The creature was discovered two years ago in China and named Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, or "terrible-headed lizard from the Orient." Figuring out what the fossil was and how it lived took the combined skills of the Chinese paleontologist who found it, an expert on fossil reptiles from the Field Museum in Chicago and a University of Chicago expert in biomechanics who studies how scallops swim.

FROM THE TIME he won an Evening Sun harmonica competition as a youngster, Larry Adler pushed the envelope for that humble instrument. A few years later, he was a star of vaudeveille, then radio and movies. The wise-cracking, short young man from Baltimore was a giant of showbiz in the 1930s for whom the leading classical composers of the day wrote concertos. He was all mouth when not playing his beloved mouth organ, and all ear when he was. Self-taught, memorizing music by listening to it once, he played with the leading symphony orchestras before he could read music.

The Orioles suffered a personnel loss last night that could significantly hurt their chances of competing for the American League East title, and manager Johnny Oates didn't have to look far for someone to blame.Catcher Chris Hoiles suffered a broken wrist when he was hit by a pitch in the second inning of the Orioles' 8-2 loss to the New York Yankees. He will be sidelined for at least a month. Oates said the injury might have been avoided if Yankees starter Tim Leary had been playing by the rules.